> I've never understood the irrational desire to quit your job.

instead of

> I've never understood the desire to quit your job.

It sounds like you think it's irrational by definition. If you start out already thinking that, of course you won't understand it.

I think it's easily explained by the fact that people have very different emotional responses to "going in to an office every week day for the rest of your life and doing what someone asks of you".

I, for one, dread that, and as soon as I had saved up enough in my first tech job to quit, I quit, to travel and often to do nothing, and I love that. When my bank account gets low I'll get another job for a while.

Others want (in a way that ought to be described as 'need') to be in control of their own fortunes, or to be doing a mixture of things that keep life interesting, or to be doing something that constantly subjects them to new experiences and new people, or to not know what next month holds. So they live their life in a way that gets them toward that.

Others don't know what they want, just that they don't want this, so they're trying other things and experimenting.

Anyway, I don't think you want what he wants. This is nothing like what you wrote:

> But take it from me, a ten-year veteran self-employed creator: If you are looking for security or reassurance, I do not recommend this line of work. However, if you are burning with curiosity — if your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don’t make sense—well, then you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you?

You mention control, they want control of their fortunes. That might be true if not for the fact that they don't actually want to learn anything 'salesy'.

Their decision-making process is completely oriented around not having a job, not around making money. Because if they really wanted to make money under their own steam, then that would be their goal, and the intermediate steps would reflect that.

The closest I can get to these people's underlying thought mechanics is that they just don't want to subordinate any time at all to anyone else. They want complete 100% control over all of their time. Which would be really nice, but c'mon now.

Hmm. I'm not going to say you're overgeneralizing, because you probably do have observational data behind your summation above. But even if it applies to the majority of "escapists" -- there's a significant percentage out there who not only do have plan; they make up for a good chunk of the truly brilliant and creative people who do anything truly interesting, at all.

The closest I can get to these people's underlying thought mechanics is that they just don't want to subordinate any time at all to anyone else. They want complete 100% control over all of their time. Which would be really nice, but c'mon now.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. But is it really that outlandish? There's this category of people known as "small business owners", you know - who basically fit that description. In fact, if you look around, there's quite a lot of them out there. In addition to, you know, genuinely creative people -- successful film makers, musicians and the like.

Are you saying they all should've just thrown in the towel, gotten a teaching job or something because... there's just no "there" in these pursuits they were almost blindingly attracted to?

C'mon now.

He had a hippy indy prog record company that got lucky with an unexpected hit record. The rest is investing, self-marketing, and networking, hard work (a la Jobs or Carmcak or Gates etc.) was seldom required.

But something tells me probably does something besides sit around and sip Daiquiris (or read HN) all day. "Networking", if you want to call it that. Or "investing" in ways that don't actually lose money takes actual work, you know.

That is: "work", nonetheless.

If we contrast it with sitting at home or at some beach drinking Daiquiris (which is still a huge part of his time), then yes.

If we contrast it with what is actually work, stressful hard work, then no.

Then we'd be shifting the goalposts.

The point is that, while it's not like he toils away in a coal mine -- and we know he ain't no brain surgeon -- whatever it is that Branson actually does, by any common sense definition it qualifies as "work".

I think you may be under-valuing how much some people like to be in control of what they put their time towards. These are the people who hate taking a class because its a requirement for a degree, or doing an entry level job that they have no interest in simply to pay the bills.

Work is a large part of life. But not working for someone isn't about 'controlling your fortune' so much as it is controlling what you get to put your effort towards for a large portion of your life. Having to work for someone else will lead to less freedom of choice than working for yourself. Or at least, that's the eventual goal.

It's quite rational.

That's just silly. If you really wanted to get away from all human dependence, the path to that is clear, go live out in the woods off the grid. Build your own shelter. 100% of your time will go towards the things you want to do.

You don't even have to go that far, you can pick and choose your amount of engagement. I met a guy at the bar who was visiting from, was it South Dakota? Way out there. Had like 8 different little business-y things he did to make a living. Only reason he came down here was to visit his mom.

Whatever it is you want, holding down a stable, reliable job is a great way to move closer to it.

People with irrational mindsets will never agree to a rational course of action. It's all gotta happen right now.

For all your talk of irrationality, this is the classic slippery slope fallacy.

As if the only two options are dependence on salaried work as an employee and escape away from civilization.

Listening to you one would think that wanting to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer is something exotic, for really crazy daredevils. Something only terminally hippies would ever attempt. When it's not just extremely common, but it's just as valid way of working as any other.

Maybe the military is not the best place to learn everything there is about employment and the motivations of people, or about what's "rational"?

You are the one who is saying I gave a either-or.

> Listening to you one would think that wanting to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer is something exotic, for really crazy daredevils.

I said nothing of the sort! I know lots of successful entrepreneurs. That's a great path to take if you want to do it. But you get there by learning about entrepreneurship and marketing, not by wishing and wishing you can quit your job.

> Maybe the military is not the best place to learn everything there is about employment and the motivations of people, or about what's "rational"?

Good thing I was only there for two years.

That's not the case (plus I'm not the parent who you were responding to).

The parent wrote: "Having to work for someone else will lead to less freedom of choice than working for yourself."

And you responded: "That's just silly. If you really wanted to get away from all human dependence, the path to that is clear, go live out in the woods off the grid."

That's the dictionary definition of the slippery slope fallacy.

The parent didn't say anything about "really [wanting] to get away from all human dependence", so why bring this up? He just said that working for yourself is more free than working for someone else.

And you continued that "Whatever it is you want, holding down a stable, reliable job is a great way to move closer to it" freelancing or creating one's own business is not an option, and everybody is better of to achieve their goals by "holding down a stable, reliable job".

Tens of millions of people started straight into either freelancing or getting their own business while young or even straight out of college. An office or salaried job has never been a requirement, and has become even less so nowadays.

>I said nothing of the sort! I know lots of successful entrepreneurs. That's a great path to take if you want to do it. But you get there by learning about entrepreneurship and marketing, not by wishing and wishing you can quit your job.

Who said about "wishing you can quit your job"? TFA and other people in these comments spoke about actually quitting your job. Or not starting with one in the first place, but doing your own thing from the start. Heck, the article is about the guy completing 10 years doing his thing, not about them "wishing they can quit their job".

So yeah, I'll concede the logical points you raised.

But you have no idea how many really and truly irrational people I've run into in my day. Life wasn't kind to them, and I'm expected to fix it, and if I don't, I'm the irrational / disloyal one. I am very very attuned to the irrational mindset.

But HN has its crazy idealism, so the second I call one person irrational, everybody here jumps on me like I'm a crazy job Nazi. I attacked your idealism, I must pay. I get this crap with my roommate, who pissed away 3 jobs since I've known him and have to give a break on the rent because he's satisfying other obligations that he took on at least partly due to idealism.

So let me state, for the record, that not wanting to have a 9-5 job is an eminently rational thing to want. Wanting it against reality, however, or without a realistic plan to accomplish it, or settling on stupid ways of getting there, like just quitting without a game plan, is a recipe for pain, not prosperity. You're not dealing from a rational frame, so your outcomes will not be what you want them to be.

My strong reaction comes from many many years of dealing with people who beg for your help, but just can't be helped. You can't talk sense into them, you can't give them anything that would meaningfully help them.

I felt sure that I’d never work for someone else again. My will to “work” was gone. I cashed out a big chunk of my retirement fund to buy myself some time. After all, I had spent years eating 80-cent Banquet® meals for lunch, saving for this moment.

From your comment above, one of many here:

So let me state, for the record, that not wanting to have a 9-5 job is an eminently rational thing to want. Wanting it against reality, however, or without a realistic plan to accomplish it, or settling on stupid ways of getting there, like just quitting without a game plan, is a recipe for pain, not prosperity. You're not dealing from a rational frame, so your outcomes will not be what you want them to be.

The article also indicates he has savings, something lots of Americans don't have, regardless of how they make their money. He has more than paid back the money he cashed out of his retirement.

I don't know what on earth you are arguing against here, but it seems unrelated to the actual article under discussion. I get that people get defensive when "everyone" seems to argue against them. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But sometimes, walking away from the stupid argument with internet strangers and not continuing to dig your grave deeper is the better choice. Sometimes, one is just running a fever or pissed at their boss or whatever and this stupid argument seems wildly more important than it really is. Down that path lies madness.

best.

Well, we can agree to that, but that's not the exclusive or general case.

I think you color it more by your experience with your roommate, than by what people generally do.

In general, judging from hundreds of millions of McJobs and corporate jobs, most people don't leave their jobs willy nilly.

I'd go as far as to say that wanting to quit your job and start a freelancing or entrepreneurial or small business gig, is not irrational in itself, EVEN if the person fails. If it was guaranteed success, we wouldn't be talking about entrepreneurial risk.

As long as its a calculated risk -- and not crazy optimism, I don't find it irrational.

Now, crazy optimism, "I will succeed no matter what", that is irrational.

I am somebody who knows what I want and why I want it. And I've found that the best path to getting those things is usually the one you're already on, you just have to make slight course corrections.

And the message from those adventures was "keep your day job and don't try anything independent"?

Whereas the desire to go be somebody's helper for 8 (or more) hours every day, be on their command, and work on implementing their dreams and plans, stands to reason?

>Their decision-making process is completely oriented around not having a job, not around making money.

You seem to be convinced that the pinnacle of reason is making money.

These can be huge reasons for folks wanting to pursue their own path. Depends on the personality.

I've never understood the irrational desire have a job.

My contract work over the last 13 years has been immensely rewarding, both financially and personally. I've met and worked alongside many very interesting people. I've had some great relationships and untold wonderful conversations (and billed for them). There have been contracts that are grueling and difficult and some that have been embarrassingly easy. I have always been thankful that diversity in my income has allowed me to ride-out economic hardships and to be selective about the work I do and how I spend my time.

When I see people chain themselves to a single source of income (and particularly a single source of health insurance) I get a little sad. I see people frustrated with dealing with HR policies, working unpaid overtime, and forced to deal with unpleasant co-workers. So many people seem to be slaves to their jobs but are either unwilling or unable to make a change. The fear of losing a job today and being without health insurance has turned work into near-slavery for many people. I've heard many stories of hardship that start with "I lost my job..."

Working intentionally and working a job/freelance are orthogonal. I work very intentionally, but I don't have a job. I watch my billable number every day, and I tune my work up/down based on my personal commitments and goals.

Any perceived "security" in a job (for the vast majority of jobs) where you hold no equity is an illusion. (Sure, sure-- different states have different protections for employees, unions have contracts, etc...) I feel very comfortable that, so long as I don't do anything to tarnish my reputation in the public sphere I have pretty good security in my income.

Edit: Grammar... oh, the grammar...

No - they just hate wasting time. Like time spent living someone else's dreams, for example.

And I can have conversations, share what I know, and learn at work.

That's great for you. Not all jobs work out like that for everyone, unfortunately. In fact they're nearly 100% "dead time" for many people I know. An acceptable enough tradeoff (given the available choices), mind you -- I'm not saying these people are complaining. But in and of itself -- 8-12 a day (depending on your commute) gone straight down the toilet, nonetheless.

So like the author of the original post himself acknowledges -- the grass certainly ain't always greener, on "the other side". But I don't poo-poo these people for trying. In fact I'd wager it'd be a much more boring world to live in if people didn't try to "break loose", as often as they do.

If everybody thought like that there wouldn't be jobs in the first place, as nobody would risk to start a business (and hire people).

Not to mention that freelancers are becoming a dominant percentage of the workforce.

Besides, the story is about a person who didn't like his job, and built a decent (if not great) career for himself by himself after he quit. Not sure what's "irrational" about it.

>Sure, he never starved. There was always some money coming in the pike. But he purposefully did not shoot for any more.

Shoot for more of what? More of the same job he hated, with perhaps better compensation but the same lack of satisfaction?

And why should have he "shot for more"? Shouldn't he just shoot for enough? (and he seems content with what he has)

In fact, why don't you "shot for more" and do something on your own? Why is your idea of more constrained to being a salaried employee?

Have you ever thought that perhaps a life doesn't need to have this work/life separation at all? When you run/own your own company your life becomes work and vice versa. It's incredibly freeing. You wake up when there is work to do, and any time you are working on something when you don't want to be - you know the direct and logical reason you are doing so. Want a vacation tomorrow? Take it. You can push a couple meetings and take those other conference calls from the beach no problem. You are never sitting there plugging away at pointless work no one will ever see - and if you are, the second you realize it you can simply stop and switch to a different direction.

Ever been in the office at 3pm wondering why the hell you have to sit there staring blankly at a screen? As a business owner that never happens. Not being productive at that moment? Just leave and go swimming. No boss to justify it to, and no reason to feel guilty about what your co-workers may think.

It's freedom. Sure if I could somehow work a job I hate for 10 years and then have financial freedom so I could do whatever with my day - great. Sign me up. That doesn't really exist (for me) though - so the next best thing I can do is make my career my life and hopefully reach the same financial goals in 40 years instead of 30, but having come out ahead since I didn't hate most of my waking life working on some useless thing I don't have any investment in.

I've done the commute to work 10+ hours a day thing, and I honestly don't know how anyone can act like such a mindless drone for so much of their useful life. Seems incredibly myopic to me.

There are jobs you could not pay me $50k/hr to do. Life is too short to spend time doing stupid busy work - no matter how well paid it is.

Or put in a much more simple way? It's about enjoying the journey, not just the destination. When the journey equals the vast majority of the waking hours you exist for, I think it's incredibly important that part of your life gives you direct satisfaction over simple monetary concerns. Once my basic needs are met - compensation is certainly nowhere near the top of my list when evaluating job opportunities.

The problem is that a job robs you of that tiny bit of fuel that you can use to change the world in the direction that is yours alone. I don't know the exact word for it, so let's call it agency. I would argue that it is in large part what makes you human and not an automaton. You didn't have that problem when you worked that warehouse job because you used it to save up for doing something you wanted. But for some senior engineer at the BigCo polishing the internals of an ad-serving backend in exchange for a hefty paycheck the problem is real.

It is especially tantalizing for us software developers because we are constantly bombarded with reminders about how much leverage and power we have. This makes the pain of wasting our agency on someone else's crappy vision even more acute.

I think you're making an assumption here that your "dream life" is a destination. Which is a perfectly rational way of thinking.

But, alternatively, your dream life could instead be the journey. So, perhaps, rather than working at a job today to make your dreams come true later, maybe your dream instead is to do what you love today, and let the future take care of itself.

Not saying either is right or wrong - I know many people in each camp. Just saying there's two ways of thinking about it.

When you don't have a job, you have a lot of time to live how you want.

Last time I quit I spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina through 16 countires, and right now I'm spending two years driving right around Africa through 30 countries

I hike, swim, camp, cook, learn languages, talk to locals, see sunrises, sunsets, beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, volcanoes, animals, take photos and generally do whatever I want on any given day.

It's paradise, for me.

Yes, and you, unlike the author of this piece, appear to grasp the basic fact that nobody will pay you for this. So you have to make a living some other way, and use the leisure you earn to do this nice thing that you want to do.

Still, I'd say in many of those jobs you have the self-determination to choose any topic. You just can't guarantee that there won't be any blowback of you pick some topic of controversy.

Sort of. If you're a journalist working for a media company, from the viewpoint of the media company, the value you're producing isn't your content, except indirectly. The direct value you produce is in attracting eyeballs, and hence ad revenue. So if your goal is to produce value with your content and get paid for that, you're not going to achieve that goal working for a media company, except as a lucky side effect.

If you're self-employed and being supported by your readers (say, by Patreon contributions), then you are producing value with your content, directly. That was my understanding of the goal of the author of the article.

> I'd say in many of those jobs you have the self-determination to choose any topic. You just can't guarantee that there won't be any blowback of you pick some topic of controversy.

You can't guarantee no blowback if you pick a controversial topic no matter how you are getting paid. The difference is in how that plays out. If you work for a media company, your future depends on the people running the media company and whether they will support you. If you work for yourself, your future depends on your readers and whether they will support you.

You'd be surprised. Actually, there are tons of freelancing jobs that pay you just for this.

Not to mention that the "author of this piece" has been making money for 10 years now, and getting paid, thank you, for doing his thing.

So maybe it's not him, but you that don't understand what's available?

Second, the fact that you justified what you were doing for yourself doesn't make you right. It means you convinced yourself you were right. Being "intentional" about your job is irrelevant to whether it is a good idea or not.

Third, a lot of people don't want to buy into a system which, if they follow its procedures and restrictions exactly, might allow them their dream life (it often does not). A lot of people would rather live right now the way they choose to, because they prefer the experience of living on their own terms instead of simply dreaming of a similar life in the future.

Additionally, the economy is seeing a general uptick in gig work and a general downtick in full time employee positions. I have run into a number of people online who have been job hunting for a year or more, to no avail. I tell them all the same thing: You may not be able to find a job, but that doesn't mean you cannot have an earned income. Go looking for gig work while you keep job hunting.

While I would dearly love to be you, my health makes that impossible. Modern medicine has created a lot of people who lived that would have died a hundred years earlier, but they may never be genuinely hale and hardy. They limp along as best they can.

I do not qualify for disability, but a regular job is a problem for me. Gig work has been a better answer, though I kind of hate it because I value security and social status. So I would much rather have a job and a brag worthy title. That simply was not working for me. I was running up crazy levels of debt when I had a corporate job, in part because that lifestyle just does not work for me. I have been paying down debt while making a lot less money doing freelance work.

Good for you. You go. But you are very fortunate. Not everyone can pull that off, even if they desperately want to.

What I would do in your position would be to be very clear in a job interview what health conditions you have that must be accommodated for. Once you start the job, find a routine that works. And then don't let anyone pressure you into deviating from your routine. They need to accommodate you, not the other way around.

Eventually it'll get fixed into the company firmament and you'll have your security.

But that wasn't the case for the author. He was happy to have gotten fired. He thanked his manager for letting him go. Having another job, ever, was completely off the table, not an option.

This is not a rational mindset. Yours might be, you don't seem to want to share your thought process and I'm sure you have your reasons for that.

But his clearly isn't.

Says who? Are you some arbiter of rationality?

What logical argument supports that going freelance and not wanting to be a salaried employer is not a "rational mindset"?

It's a perfectly rational choice.

The lack of that observation may mean he isn't the most stellar author ever. Or it may mean he is not some font of wisdom and his explanations are sort of half-baked. But none of that is evidence that his choices were irrational.

It doesn't have to be the same choice you would make for it to be rational.

And I don't owe you justification for my life choices. It is obnoxious to imply that I do.

I haven't dismissed nor attacked your life choices. I have merely pointed out the obvious-on-the-face-of-it fact that your life is different from his and this creates different decision trees and different outcomes. That's it.

I didn't realize how much the condition was affecting me until several years after I started on my own. Now I know that it caused me to make more emotional decisions, to have a short fuse, and to tire easily. It still does.

As I reflect on it, I try not to make that too much of a factor. It's one of those mysterious impossible-to-indentify conditions. I still marvel that a person can go to an office every day, work around all of those people, and not need to take a nap in the middle of the day. In the rare days that I really feel good, suddenly "normal" people make sense. But that quickly slips away.

I don't want to make that a part of my rationalization of my decisions, though it likely played a large part. Anyway, I think I explained the rationale behind my irrationality in my post so I'll let that do the rest.

How? Not a rhetorical question; most people, even with a lucrative skill and the basics of negotiation, don't manage that. How did your friend pull it off?

If you have a lucrative skill, then you can keep doing changing jobs until you have one you like. If you don't have a lucrative skill, your first priority should be getting one. These days you can swipe a credit card to go to code school. Or just save up. Code school grads still get snapped up as soon as they graduate.

Not everybody likes to code, but hey, it's better than not having a job.

If you have a lucrative skill you'd be an idiot to go work for someone else. You can have your own business and have clients coming to YOU, and get to keep all the profit, and grow the business too.

So, somehow your definition of lucrative skill is "lucrative, but only if you're a salaried employee".

The business side is only a hassle at scale, at which case, you can afford to hire some assistants.

Sure, all of the above is my fault. But once you've dug the hole, it's hard to get out.

It's a matter of taste